Command Authority

28

Throughout the day, Clark, Chavez, and Kryvov moved from one bar to the next, each more shady than the last, drinking beer and sitting around while Igor called and texted people he knew on the periphery of the Kiev underworld. They steered far away from the chaos of Independence Square, and instead remained in remote working-class neighborhoods outside the city center. At each different location men would show up, scope out the table of journalists from across the room, and then, as often as not, leave.

But half the suspicious characters that came into the bars to eyeball the two foreigners and their local fixer did, in fact, come over and sit down. These men were drug dealers, human traffickers, and a man who said he could get any car off a German street and into the driveway of any Ukrainian — for a price. Through these men with firsthand knowledge of the local underworld, Clark and Chavez learned a great deal about the workings of the organized-crime situation here in the city.

While it was true that there were representatives of Russian organized crime active in Kiev, Clark and Chavez were surprised to hear how many FSB active measures operations seemed to be going on in the area as well.

Another troubling bit of information that came to light involved the clashes going on all over the city. The Nationalist Party had taken the presidency the year before, wrestling it away from a pro-Russian party that had been caught up in a series of corruption scandals. But the nationalists were not without issues of their own.

The rumor Clark and Chavez were picking up on the street, however, was that the current clashes were stoked on both sides by the FSB. It was said the Russians were organizing bus caravans from the pro-Russian east, filling the buses full of paid union workers, and dumping them in Kiev just upstream from the marches. At the same time, they secretly funded media outlets that pushed the pro-nationalist agenda.

If this was all true, it would show the Russians were interested less in winning hearts and minds in Ukraine, and more with causing chaos and civil strife.

By eight p.m. Clark called a halt to the day’s recon, and the men returned to the flat. After sitting together in the living room to discuss the day’s events, they decided they would go out for a quick dinner on nearby Khreshchatyk Street. They took a few minutes to sanitize and secure the flat, and then they headed out.

It was a breezy thirty-eight degrees outside, but the residents of Kiev considered this a spring evening; there were many pedestrians out in European Square as the six men walked along toward a restaurant recommended by Igor Kryvov.

As they walked through the square to the restaurant, they were spread out several yards wide, making their way through the crowd. Clark, Kryvov, and Chavez chatted in Russian, and the three non — Russian speakers mostly walked along with their hands in their pockets to keep warm. Gavin Biery was on the far right-hand side of the entourage, and when a group of young men got in front of him on the sidewalk, he moved to get out of the way. As he passed them, however, one of the men stepped into his path and shouldered straight into Biery’s side, spinning him around and knocking him to the ground.

The man kept walking with the rest of his small group, barely breaking stride.

Caruso didn’t see the impact, but he saw the result. As the obvious culprit walked away, Dom turned and started after the young man.

Sam Driscoll grabbed him by the arm, restraining him. “Let it go.”

Chavez helped Gavin back to his feet. “You okay, Gav?”

“Yeah.” He brushed himself off, more embarrassed than hurt.

Caruso looked at Kryvov. “What the hell was that about?”

Kryvov had no idea. “I didn’t see what happened.”

Chavez finished brushing the Campus director of information technology off and patted him on the back. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

Once inside the restaurant, the men moved to a long table with benches in the back of a dark bar area. Beer was brought to Gavin, Dom, and Sam; Igor Kryvov ordered a bottle of vodka on ice. Ding and Clark had been drinking in the bars where they met with the locals since ten-thirty that morning, so they ordered mineral water, although Igor had the waiter bring shots of vodka for everyone so they could toast.

They kept their conversation centered on topics that fit with their legends as journalists. They talked about the news in other parts of the world, hotels and computers and other technology. There were enough similarities with their actual lives and the lives of their covers that the conversation was in no way stilted or forced.

Just after their food came, three men in dark coats entered the restaurant. The operators of The Campus all noticed them; they were conditioned to keep an eye open for any threats, even while eating dinner. As the hostess greeted the men, they walked past her without responding and went into the bar area.

Gavin Biery was talking about photography now, the differences between the quality of film prints and digital images, but the other five men at the table were silent, and all focused on the three new arrivals. The sullen, darkly dressed individuals walked straight over to the long table where the Campus men sat, and they sat down on opposite sides of the table just feet away. They turned their chairs toward the group and just stared quietly.

Biery stopped talking.

There were a few uncomfortable moments while the Americans waited for Kryvov to introduce the friends he’d obviously neglected to mention he’d invited along for dinner, but very quickly it became obvious Igor didn’t know the men, either.

“Who are you?” Kryvov asked in Ukrainian.

The three men just looked back at Kryvov without responding.

The waiter came by to offer menus to the new visitors, but one of the men reached up and pushed him back, sending him on his way.

After another minute of awkward silence, Chavez looked at Driscoll. “Can you pass the bread?”

Sam picked up the bread bowl and sent it on its way down to Ding.

Within seconds everyone was eating again, and although Dom kept his angry staring contest going with one of the men, he still dug into his lamb and potatoes.

When the check came, delivered by a waiter who went out of his way to approach the middle of the table, staying away from the evil-looking men at both ends, Clark paid it, finished the last of his water, and stood up. “Gentlemen. Shall we?”

The rest of the group followed him out the door, but the three men who’d latched on to them during dinner did not follow.

As soon as they were halfway across European Square, Igor Kryvov said, “My friends, I’m sorry about that.”

Clark said, “FSB?”

“Yes. I think so.”

Dom nodded, “Those guys are the Keystone Kops. The worst surveillance I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Clark shook his head. “Dom, they are demonstrativnaya slezhka, demonstrative shadowing. They want us to know we are being followed. They will harass us, annoy us, generally make things tough so we can’t do whatever it is they think we came here to do.”

Driscoll said, “I could understand that in Russia, but this isn’t Russia. How can those guys get away with that here in Ukraine?”

“It’s certainly brazen,” Clark had to admit. “They must be pretty confident we aren’t going to go to the local police.”

Kryvov said, “Or else they’ve got connections in the local police. Maybe both.”

Clark added, “It’s nothing to worry about. It doesn’t mean we are in any way compromised. Our cover is solid.” He chuckled. “They just don’t particularly like our cover.”

Sam said, “These knuckleheads would really blow a gasket if they knew what we were really doing.”

Caruso said, “I don’t like this shit. Mr. C, how about you let Igor find us some guns?”

Clark shook his head. “As long as we’re in cover we can’t be carrying weapons, not even covertly. Remember, we can get challenged by the local cops at any time. They pull a piece out of one of our jackets, and our story about who we are and what we are doing will go tits up in a hurry. That happens, and we’re off to the local jail, and there I can guaran-damn-tee we will be up to our eyeballs with mob goons we don’t want to deal with.”

“Roger that,” said Dom. He wasn’t happy rolling unarmed with Russian thugs literally bumping up against them, but Clark had been doing this sort of thing since before Dom was born, so he knew better than to argue.

They made it back to their building around eleven, and climbed the stairs to the third-floor flat. As they arrived at the door to the apartment, Ding slid his key into the lock, started to turn the latch, but he stopped himself before he opened the door.

“Down!” he shouted.

The other five men had no idea what was wrong, but they hit the deck quickly. Biery did not do so on his own power — rather, Driscoll took the IT director down like a linebacker making a tackle in the open field.

There was no explosion. After a few seconds, Clark looked up to find Chavez still standing at the door, his hand on the key in the lock. He said, “The lock has been tampered with… It feels gritty. Maybe it was just picked, but it might have a pressure switch attached. If it does, and I let go, then we go boom.”

The men climbed up slowly from the floor in the hallway. There was some nervous laughter between some of them, but not from Clark. He moved to the door and took out a penlight. He knelt down, had Chavez move his hand a little so he could see the latch and the key in the lock.

“It could be wired on the other side. No way to know.”

While Chavez stood motionless, unsure if moving the door might trigger an explosion, Caruso headed into the stairwell, climbed out a window there, and shimmied along a narrow ledge to the balcony. In moments the men in the hallway could hear him inside the flat, and in seconds more, he was on the far side of the door.

“It’s clear,” he said.

Chavez breathed a long sigh and let go.

Caruso opened the door from the inside.

The rest of the men entered the flat and, if the evidence of a picked lock did not already tell them, they now knew for certain they had had visitors while they were out.

The room had been oddly rearranged. A sofa was now in the middle of the room, a chair had been stacked on another chair, and the kitchen table was now upside down. The centerpiece that had been on it now sat at the center of the inverted table.

All of Gavin’s laptops were encrypted and password-protected, so no one had been able to search them. But that did not stop the FSB — Clark was certain they were the culprits of this — from unplugging them from their power strips and tying the cords together. The laptops were closed and stacked on one another.

At the same moment, both Clark and Chavez each brought a finger to his lips, telling the rest to keep quiet, as they might now be under audio surveillance. They could still talk, but only in character.

Gavin Biery was shaken. “Somebody has been screwing with my computers.”

Chavez patted him on the back as he passed, heading down the hallway to check the three bedrooms.

The bedrooms looked much the same as the front room: random items had been moved around, suitcases stood stacked one upon the other, and clothes lay in piles on the floor.

He shook his head in confusion, then shook it again when he saw a small stuffed teddy bear had been left on one of the beds. It had not been in the flat before. Ding checked it for bugs, and saw that it was clean. Instead, it was just some sort of perverse message.

As he checked the last of the three bedrooms, finding the same random signs of activity, Chavez noticed the bathroom light was on. He leaned in to shut it off but stopped when he noticed a foul odor.

He checked. There were feces in the toilet.

“Classy,” Ding said to himself.

Dom came rushing into the room. “Some jackass dumped out all my clothes.”

He looked over Chavez’s shoulder. “That’s just nasty. What is it they are trying to prove? I mean, did a bunch of fucking kids break in here?”

The two men returned to the living room, and here Clark turned on the television and a radio full blast; then he opened all the faucets in the attached kitchen so that the sound of water flowing through the pipes added to the noise.

He brought his men into the middle of the large room. Under all the background noise, he said, “Guys, this is just a little psychological intimidation. They want us to leave, but they are using soft measures at this point. They are showing us we can expect really close and really annoying company at all times.”

Clark looked around the room and realized the FSB’s tactic was having the desired effect. Gavin and Dom looked at once confused and defeated, as if their operation here had been undermined even before it began. Driscoll just looked angry, as if his personal space had been violated.

Clark said, “These assholes are making it known they can and will do what they want, but we’re not going to let it get to us. We can still operate here, we just have to be on our toes. We’ll find ways to slip around them while staying in cover.”

Gavin shook his head, doing his best to put the worry out of his mind. After a moment, he said, “Whatever. I call first in the bathroom.”

Chavez and Caruso looked at each other. Dom said, “It’s all yours, Gav.”